Longer, Harder, Earlier: Update From U.K. COVID “Inquiry”

Longer, harder, earlier

Update from U.K. Covid “Inquiry”

THINKING COALITION

The massively expensive and largely pointless U.K. COVID Inquiry trundles through yet another module, this time Module 8 “Children and Young People”. Of all the catastrophic harms imposed on the U.K. population through the COVID response, the harms imposed on children were the most egregious. While I suspect that most readers have zoned out of the U.K. COVID Inquiry, I was triggered by a tweet from the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (CBFFJ) that suggested that schools should have been closed earlier. I decided to look into how these people could possibly reach this conclusion.

As I wrote in the Daily Sceptic in 2023, the main purpose of the COVID “Inquiry” seems to be to approve the draconian state interventions, most probably to ensure that they can be used again in the future. The “Inquiry” has essentially refused to look at any serious evidence about the effectiveness of lockdowns (or the mRNA gene-therapy products). The “Inquiry” is overwhelmingly comprised of participants whom were involved in designing and implementing the draconian responses. The rest are, for the most part, left-leaning statists who support state coercion as an article of faith. Tragically, none of the organisations who correctly identified that i) the COVID threat was grossly exaggerated, ii) that lockdowns were ineffective or, iii) that years of life lost (YLL) to lockdowns would far outweigh YLL to COVID, have been allowed to participate.

The CBFFJ’s key position is that lockdowns should have been implemented earlier. They maintain this position despite clear evidence that infections were falling prior to the first lockdown. They also ignore the fact that Sweden managed to achieve a better outcome by not having lockdowns.

Professor Wood from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Mathematics was very early to point out that infections were falling before the first lockdown was imposed. At the start of the COVID event, infections could not be observed directly, so he and his colleagues back-solved from COVID deaths1 in order to infer COVID infections. From the chart below, it is clear than inferred infections (black line) were falling before the imposition of lockdowns (vertical red lines). From this observation, the key question about the state’s response is: should the state have left it to individuals to make sensible decisions ( as in Sweden), or should the state have imposed draconian restrictions and cancelled citizens’ ’inalienable‘ rights? Left-leaning statists will always favour the latter.

Many on the Left actually want to be bullied by the State and treated like children. Some of the Leftist academics involved in the drafting the state’s COVID response did not make a secret of the fact that they welcomed the collectivisation of the population. One member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), social psychology Professor Stephen Richer, co-authored a lengthy paper singing the praises of COVID measures and people’s compliance. Bearing the Orwellian title “Together Apart”, the authors insisted: “we must sweep away a century of anti-collectivism which regards people coming together in groups as a source of deep anxiety and hostility.”

The Wood paper also showed that the “evidence” (produced by Imperial College mathematicians (Flaxman et al.)) proving that the interventions (proposed by Imperial College mathematicians (Ferguson et al.)) actually worked relied on mathematical fraud! The rapid decline in the “R” number2 around the first lockdown “demonstrated” by Flaxman is based largely on very restrictive assumptions about the behaviour of R after lockdowns. This is circular maths where the result you demonstrate is directly owing to the assumptions you use. The same trick that was used to generate the “lives saved” figures.

The debate about early or late lockdowns are moot since the key prediction of the Ferguson model — that the health service was going to be overwhelmed — turned out to be bunkum. Most of the beds that were emptied in March 2020 remained empty in April 2020 and this was due not to the effectiveness of lockdown, but due to the fact that the model was garbage (also clearly demonstrated by data from the Diamond Princess).

Another nail in the lockdown coffin came from a very extensive study by Professor Ioannidis and others which concluded: “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPI(Non-pharmaceutical interventions). Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less-restrictive interventions.”

Back to CBFFJ

The first striking feature about the CBFFJ is that the main participants operate in the state or NGO sectors. Despite professing to be “non-governmental”, NGOs are for the most part very closely affiliated with the state and almost always receive state funding or related support. With the possible exception of Naomi Fulop, who is professor of “public health”, CBFFJ board members do not have a scientific or medical background. In general “public health” courses involve population-level statistics and studies of policy and no medical qualifications are required to become an expert in public health.

Each of the key members of CBFFJ lost a family member due to COVID, an outcome which they attribute primarily to a failure to lockdown earlier. As a Core Participant, CBFFJ receives very extensive privileges including the right to make statements, to ask the “Inquiry” to question witnesses and to receive (under certain circumstances) funding to pay for extensive legal representation.

The CBFFJ’s statement in Module 7 was made by Professor Fulop, whose 94 year old mother died in January 2021. The statement generally criticised the state’s response to COVID, with the general conclusion that the solution to state inefficiency is more aggressive intervention. The organisation has received significant mainstream media coverage from the BBC, the Guardian, LBC, the Mirror and others which indicates that the “longer, harder, earlier” stance is very much on-message.

As mentioned, almost all of the “Inquiry’s” Core Participants were either involved in designing and implementing the disastrous COVID response, or else are so-called Third Sector entities calling for even more state intervention next time around. In sharp contrast, there is essentially no involvement from individuals or organisations who were right about the policy failings, who called for less state intervention and, in particular, objected to lockdowns and coerced vaccinations. Despite producing extensive analysis which was subsequently vindicated, there is no representation from organisations such as Doctors for COVID Ethics, the HART Group, the

among others.

This alone will ensure that the “Inquiry” will come to completely flawed conclusions that will reach the pre-determined “longer, harder, earlier” position.

Conclusions

It is reasonable to be irritated that statist organisations are seemingly indifferent to the evidence of the tremendous harms inflicted by lockdowns and that the pool of “Inquiry” participants is extraordinarily unrepresentative. However, it is important to accept that organisations like CBFFJ are very competent lobbyists.

It is a great shame that many highly competent and sensible folk in the liberty movement have, for the most part, not been able to influence this “Inquiry”. One of the main purposes of the Twitter account I set up in 2020 was to show it was possible to demonstrate in real time that: i) the threat from COVID was grossly exaggerated, ii) that the lockdowns achieved almost nothing, iii) that the collateral damage from lockdowns far outweighed life years lost due to COVID and iv) that vaccines were neither safe nor effective. In fact, it soon became reasonably clear that the COVID response was primarily an exercise in social engineering, lobbied for by various oligarch and vested interests.

Even in the first half of 2020, the initial evidence pointed to these conclusions, so we did not have to wait for ex-post results and analysis in 2025.

Unfortunately, it seems that people who reached these conclusions will not be heard at this “Inquiry”.

Best wishes

Alex

Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model. He spent his career in consultancy and fund management including a long stint in Russia. His last job was in one of the world’s largest pension funds where he handled corporate governance issues and shareholder voting over a portfolio of 2,300 equity investments. He is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about government overreach and are developing practical solutions to protect inalienable individual liberties (www.thinkingcoalition.org)

Thanks to Mark Sutherland for important edits.

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